Complete B-Sides

This review was as good as written ten years ago, since by then, all of these
songs had already entered ...

This review was as good as written ten years ago, since by then, all of these
songs had already entered the short canon of music memorized by my adolescent
mind. As I acquired every new piece of Pixies material, I saw songs by other
bands expunged from my cramped brain. As I absorbed "In Heaven", Big Black's
"The Model" all but disappeared; "Into the White" burst in, Dinosaur Jr's
"Freak Scene" ran screaming. I distinctly remember R.E.M.'s "The One I Love"
getting the boot from, of all songs, "Winterlong". And these are just the
b-sides.

I think it goes without saying that the Pixies' b-sides don't make for an
average, run-of-the-mill outtakes compilation, as many of the songs are
almost or equally as radiant as the more fortunate tracks that made it to
the five classics between 1987 and 1991. And if nothing else, this release
proves that, like Dylan in the 60s and Brian Eno in the 70s, the Pixies
were the blinding visionaries of the 80s. Virtually everything they touched
was groundbreaking and revelatory, leaving one to wish they could only have
touched more.

Although Complete B-Sides isn't actually totally complete,
leaving out live versions of "Planet of Sound" and "Tame" from an alternate
"Alec Eiffel" single, everything else is here: 19 tracks, amounting to 48
minutes of music. The disc also features classic videos of "Here Comes Your
Man" and "Allison" (though the wind-tunneled "Alec Eiffel" is curiously
absent), as well as enlightening, albeit short liner notes for each song.
And because 4AD is an intelligent label, Complete B-Sides is sequenced
chronologically. The tracklist is exactly what you'd get if you burned the
singles for "Gigantic", "Monkey Gone to Heaven", "Here Comes Your Man",
"Velouria", "Dig for Fire", "Planet of Sound", and "Alec Eiffel" to CDR,
in that exact order, minus the album track that opens each disc.

An alternate take of Surfer Rosa's "River Euphrates" opens the record
with nearly a minute of Joey Santiago's guitar antics, as well as a dynamic
ending which replaces the fade-out of the original. "Vamos", which appeared
on both Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, was always a live
favorite and usually their set closer: between lead singer Black Francis'
yelping and Santiago's brutal guitar torturing, this live version is as
explosive as they come. But Complete B-Sides truly takes off with one
of the best under-two-minute songs ever: a live cover of "In Heaven (Lady in
the Radiator Song)" from David Lynch's Eraserhead. Often their encore,
the song grows gradually louder and louder, ending with one of the band's most
cathartic moments on record.

The disc moves from Surfer Rosa-era to Doolittle with "Manta
Ray", a classic Pixies head-bobber boasting Mexican-style guitar strumming
and quick, two-note drumming. "Weird at My School", as Black accurately notes,
spotlight the "hyperness" that defined so much of the Pixies' work. "Dancing
the Manta Ray", meanwhile, shows the band's surf-rock tendencies, as does the
sublime "Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)". "Into the White" follows with a killer
bassline and Kim Deal's breathy vocals; the perfect balance of tension and
release, and one of the real standouts here. The Doolittle era concludes
with "Bailey's Walk", one of the Pixies' slowest and weirdest songs, featuring
Black Francis in fractured and tortured yowls.

The Bossanova b-sides open with drummer David Lovering's tepid ode to
Debbie Gibson, "Make Believe", followed by Deal's beautiful cover of Neil
Young's "I've Been Waiting for You". After "The Thing" (essentially an outtake
from a section of "The Happening"), we're offered a driving instrumental Frank
Black wrote at 15. And the era's rounded out by another gorgeous Neil Young
cover ("Winterlong") and "Santo", another slow, chanty number straight out of
a bar scene in El Paso, 1864.

"Theme from 'Narc'", the first track from the Trompe le Monde years, is
just that-- a cover of the theme song from the "Narc" video game. It's another
adrenaline-pumping instrumental, displaying the raw, interstellar quality that
characterized Trompe le Monde. "Build High" works as a kind of
south-of-the-border space-jam, and on the Spanish-sung Graham Gouldman cover,
"Evil Hearted You"-- as with the instrumental version of "Letter to Memphis",
which closes the record-- the guitar mimics the lyrics so well you can almost
hear the ghost of Black Francis departing.

When I bought this album the other day, wearing my Pixies shirt by coincidence
(I swear!), the shave-headed girl behind the counter said, "Nice shirt. I
love the Pixies." I told her that I already owned all these songs,
but just had to buy the album, anyway. "Oh, really," she said cautiously,
as though there were something pathetic about that. "Maybe there is," I later
thought to myself. But then I looked at my tattered Pixies shirt, so beaten
and worn it was practically falling off my body, and I thought otherwise. Like
the music itself, which remains as vital and exciting as it was upon the day
of its release, I'll never let this shirt go. Some things you just keep around
to remind you of your first true love.